Playtech sells whole stake in Plus500 for $228 million

(Reuters) - Playtech Plc has sold its entire 10 percent shareholding in retail online trading platform Plus500 for about 176 million pounds ($228 million), the company said on Friday, giving no details on the buyer.

The announcement comes a day after a group of individual founding shareholders in Israel-based Plus500 sold an 8 percent stake in the company, citing "significant demand from a small number of institutional investors".

Activist investor Odey Asset Management, which also has a 6.7 percent stake in Plus500 according to Thomson Reuters Eikon data, disclosed a 5.02 percent stake in Playtech on Tuesday.

Playtech, best known as a gambling software maker, said it had sold 11.4 million ordinary shares at 1,550 pence-a-share in Plus500, which provides an online platform for retail investors to make bets on financial markets through contracts for differences.

Friday's sale represents about 9.99 percent of Plus500's share capital and will not impact Playtech's entitlement to the interim dividend announced by Plus500 on August 13 - which equates to about $16 million, PlayTech said on Friday.

PlayTech added that the sale proceeds will be used to reduce debt and other corporate purposes.

Plus500 said on Thursday that after the stake sale by its founders, Alon Gonen, Gal Haber, Elad Ben-Izhak, Omer Elazari and Shlomi Weizmann, they would still own about 8 percent of the company.

($1 = 0.7731 pounds)

(Reporting by Justin George Varghese in Bengaluru; editing by Patrick Graham)